Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses a number of analog sensors and signal-conditioning methods, followed by a number of sensors that already provide their measurements in digital form, and the buses and protocols used. It also discusses actuators. The book describes how to interface the actuators and the sensors with the Arduino, either by digitizing the signals or by using the appropriate bus-interface. It explains a program structure that permits the Arduino to support a simple query-response protocol in order to serve as a slave to a host computer. The book configures a Raspberry Pi as a standardized host computer. It provides data storage in databases, and presents the data in graphical form either using Octave running locally on the Raspi or by publishing measurement data with a web server, also running on the Raspi.